As I said in the previous post, the original agreement contained safeguards. The insufficiency of those safeguards only became apparent after the CPC won the election.

We know safeguards do protect the prisoners since the current agreement apparently does contain sufficient protections.

So the Liberal Government was guilty of drafting an insufficient agreement. But it is not fair to suggest they simply started handing over prisoners they knew would be tortured. They thought they were protecting them from that.

So, if I follow the Cons and Glavin here, the Cons knew nothing about torture allegations and didn't lie when they said they knew nothing but everyone knew when the Liberals were in government so they should have done something but we didn't know so we didn't do anything until we did do something.

True Gayle. Worth noting to that the Libs must know all this would eventually come up, but are willing to go forward anyway.

What's weird is why are the Tories so afraid of this? Surely, though the details may get a bit embarrassing, its a case of "mistakes were made (by two govs) but now they've been fixed". How can that be worse than this slowly unfolding political disaster?

Negotiations may have started under the Liberals, but let us all remember that the non-confidence vote happened on November 28th, 2005 with Parliament dissolved the next day. So, at the time of the agreement and for almost three weeks of final negotiations prior to the signing, Canada was effectively without government.

That was Hillier's agreement. Not Paul Martin's, and I have seen no evidence provided anywhere that the agreement signed was vetted in final form by anyone from the Liberal Party.

A couple of fine points: very few <20?) detainees were handed over before teh Kandahar deployment. Since then 100's have been handed over.

Seems people have forgotten the extent to which this mission has "crept" over the years. Including the revelation, coming late to the Liberals as far I was concerned, that the Americans, the ultimate responsibility for detainees they probably assumed would be theirs at the outset (since it really is their battle), were directly implicated in torture...and still are, for that matter.

The Harper government has really screwed up on the Afghan detainee issue, and they in fact could have used this against past Liberal governments if they played it the right way. Regardless of Mr Colvin’s previous warnings being unheeded, once his testimony was heard they should have thanked him for his courage and began a formal inquiry as to what went wrong.

Whatever the government did or did not know in terms of torture allegations within Afghanistan’s prisons, they could have argued that bureaucracy between the foreign ministry and dept. of defence prevented the information from reaching the government, and thrown this back to the Martin government’s original agreement. It would drag out for months/years with little real damage to Harper. Then once the inquiry’s final recommendations were made they could admit serious mistakes were made, some junior officials would be fired, and a few key recommendations could be half-heartedly adopted.

But the problem was it is possible that this could result in a one or two point drop for Harper in the polls while the inquiry was being held. This does not help in his quest for the almighty majority.

So Harper’s brilliant solution?

- You stonewall the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry & fire the chairman,

- Defy an order of Parliament, basically being in contempt of the highest court of the land,

- Prorogue Parliament and kill 37 pieces of legislation, all to scuttle the existing committee and thumb their collective noses at the Parliamentary Order.

This is beyond stupidity at this point. Has anyone from the Harper government stepped back and actually looked at how it has come to this?

And add on top of this a pathetic attempt to hide behind our brave soldiers and accuse the opposition of calling our troops torturers.

A real Prime Minister would know how to handle a situation like this, and Harper is clearly not qualified.

The only thing keeping him afloat for so long was a weak and ineffective Liberal opposition, who in a minority situation were not afforded a proper ‘time-out’ after the 2006 & 2008 election losses to rebuild their party. The Grits would be soaring in the polls right now if that had been allowed to occur, and his may yet happen depending on what transpires over the next few weeks.

Remember, it is never the actual transgression that gets you, it’s the cover-up.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has paid a large price in popularity for shutting down Parliament, with his Conservatives effectively tied with Liberals in a new poll by The Strategic Counsel.

Conservatives are at 31 per cent, compared to 30 per cent for Liberals, in the poll conducted by Strategic Counsel late last week, as controversy was starting to build over Harper's prorogation of Parliament until March 3.

Frankly, I'm surprised. I thought prorogation would really help the Harpies. Could it be that Canadians really are waking up?

T of KW, Colvin said all soldiers who handed over Afghans were guilty of war crimes. Naturally that elicited a very strong response from the government.

Many Canadians also see the oppostion as carelessly impugning the reputation of all Canadian soldiers on this issue without proper restraint or evidence.

Saying war crimes occurred then demanding a public inquiry to determine if any of this evidence exists is not how our legal system does or should operate.

Unlike the judicial proceedings of the Somalia Inquiry which was based on hard evidence (and subsequently shut down by Chretien's misuse of prorogue), Colvin's assertions are based on innuendo and hearsay.

PM Harper's proroguing Parliament has been a mistake, and I think he realized that as soon as he called it.

On the other hand, the Liberal's blatant and constant abuse of prorogation over the decades leaves them with no moral authority on this issue.

I've never been supportive of using prorogation for base, politcal ends. But I also don't see it as the end of democracy either.

In the interim, the opposition should go about gathering facts on the detainee issue. Unfortunately, we have persons such as Liberal MP John McCallum, who has never been to Afghanistan saying this about our soldiers:

". . . the fact that they may have been committing war crimes, handing over detainees knowing that they were very likely to be tortured, that is a war crime."

That's pretty clever, Paul! Italicise fact, and pretend the word may has no meaning. why are you so desperate to hear soldiers accused of war crimes that you're willing to lie, Paul? Do you really hate them that much?

That's what McCallum says and that's presumably what he believes. Again, if you and the Harper gov. want to make the case that he's wrong, that our troops really are responsible for gov. fuckups, then go ahead. I hope you even make it an election issue.

Paul S. wrote: "T of KW, Colvin said all soldiers who handed over Afghans were guilty of war crimes..."

That is a lie. Colvin did not say that. He specifically said he was making no accusations against the soldiers but was concerned [I forget the exact wording here] with the officials at the top who made the decisions.

BCL, I am unclear on what McCallum believes. He says it is a fact that may be true. What does that mean? More importantly, other then innuendo, what evidence does he offer? Photos? Statements? Confessions? Anything?

Definitely, some kind of cognitive disability, but you'd need a professional to make specific diagnosis.

But at least you've got a sense of humour. The coward who's hiding behind the soldiers and pushing them forward to bear any accusations of war crimes telling someone else to "man up". That's hilarious!